


The Murmuring of Innumerable Bees

by kindkit



Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Bees, M/M, Retirement, Sussex, Trauma, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-17
Updated: 2014-05-17
Packaged: 2018-01-25 11:48:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1647584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kindkit/pseuds/kindkit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the war, Watson goes to Sussex.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Murmuring of Innumerable Bees

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for Vernets in the 2014 ACD Holmesfest. 
> 
> The title is stolen from Tennyson.

On the 16th of December, 1918, rather late at night, there is a knock on the door of a cottage on the Sussex downs. 

"Come in, Watson," cries a voice from inside.

Watson comes in, sets down his two bags, takes off his dripping hat and coat and hangs them on pegs by the door. Only then does he look around. He has travelled a long time to get here, thinking all the while of what he will say and what Holmes may say, and yet he still isn't ready. He looks slowly over a space smaller than their Baker Street sitting room, sparely furnished with bookshelves, rugs, two armchairs, a stove serving for heat and cooking, a plain oak table, two kitchen chairs. And there is Holmes, his hair gone quite grey, standing by the table and looking at Watson. 

"How did you know who it was?" Watson asks. He can almost piece together a chain of reasoning: the war ending a month ago, the likely speed of a military discharge for a 65-year-old doctor, the likely progression of Watson's loneliness in London.

"Who else could it have been?" Holmes takes two cups and saucers down from the cupboard and places them on the table. There's a teapot there already, a loaf of bread, butter, honey, and a kettle on the hob. He must have begun laying the table as soon as he heard the taxi's engine.

"It looks as though you were expecting me." Watson doesn't only mean the table. The room is furnished like an ark, with two of everything important.

"Not expecting. Hoping, perhaps. Come and sit down."

And so, after more than four years, Holmes and Watson meet again.

They eat, drink, and talk of trivialities: Watson's journey, the weather. Then Holmes makes up a bed of rugs and eiderdowns for Watson next to the stove and sits smoking in an armchair while Watson falls asleep. He's still there when Watson awakens a few hours later from a nightmare of bone saws and young men's shattered limbs. Watson watches the red glow of Holmes's pipe until he can sleep again.

Somehow it's never a question that Watson will stay. They fit a second narrow bed into the cottage's bedroom. There's no more than three feet of space between them, and at night Watson can hear Holmes's breathing and the rustle of bedclothes every time he turns. In earlier days Watson would have found such proximity intolerable, but here, now, it calms him. 

Holmes makes room for Watson's clothes in the wardrobe and for his books on the shelves. Watson didn't bring much with him; most of his things are still in London, but he doesn't miss them. This is a new life, separated from the old one by the chasm of war, and it's fitting that he comes to it with empty hands.

On Christmas Day, Watson walks alone to church and prays, all the more fervently because he doubts that anyone hears, for peace on earth. The church is full of women, old men, and children. Of the few young men, one is missing an arm and another walks with a stick. He wonders where they served, if he might have treated their wounds, but he doesn't speak to them.

The old year ends, and at midnight he and Holmes toast the new year in honey mead brewed up by one of the old farmers. It's rather foul, but Watson drinks it willingly in the knowledge that 1919 can only be happier than the year that's gone.

January sets in, rainy and chill and quiet. There are nights, now and then, when Watson doesn't dream.

One evening as Watson sits wool-gathering over a two-day-old newspaper by the fire, Holmes gives him a sharp look. "How long has your shoulder been aching?"

Watson realizes he's been unconsciously rubbing at it. He considers blaming it on the cold, but Holmes will see a lie. And with Holmes, he thinks he can tell the truth. "Since July of 1916."

"The Battle of the Somme."

"Yes. I was in a field hospital. It was . . . "

"Yes."

"There were so many, Holmes. So many."

That night, Holmes takes out his violin for the first time since Watson came. It's not good for it to be played in the cold, he's explained. But tonight he plays nevertheless, sweet sentimental airs from the last century that have always been Watson's favourites.

Days pass into weeks. There's little to do in the winter, but Holmes, who used to fret himself to cocaine-stupefied shreds when without a case, seems content. They read, Holmes plays, sometimes Watson sings very nearly in tune, sometimes Holmes recites verses or bits of Shakespeare's plays in his fine theatrical voice. There are no cases. Perhaps, since 1914, people have grown sick of killing.

Besides cocaine, Holmes seems to have given up another of his pastimes. There is no chemistry apparatus in the cottage. When Watson asks, Holmes says, "The invention of mustard gas has persuaded me that the great days of chemistry are over."

In dry weather they walk arm in arm across the downs or by the sea. Astonishingly, Holmes has learnt to interest himself in nature; he points out notable birds and plants and is delighted to find the occasional fossil in a chalk outcrop, which he pries loose if possible and brings home to measure and draw. Now and then Watson finds bits of old glass on the beach, ground smooth by the tides. He keeps them in a jar on the bedroom windowsill, and every time he sees them he remembers that time and nature wear away all the sharp edges of man-made things.

One night, simply and without fear, he comes to Holmes's bed. For so many years, it would have been unthinkable. No, not unthinkable; Watson will not pretend he has never thought of it. Only impossible. But time and nature, and above all war, have worn down propriety too, and changed his sense of what cannot or must not be.

He kneels at Holmes's bedside and lays his hand on his friend's thin, lined cheek. Holmes's eyes open, unstartled and yet full of wonder. "Oh, Watson. Oh, my dear boy."

A few days later, Watson buys a notebook in the village and begins to write about the war. He's afraid, at first, that he will make a story of it, an adventure that boys will read with shining eyes and hope to live someday. The fear, he soon decides, was laced with vanity; he can no more make a jolly tale out of the trenches than he could carve a wineglass out of iron. Whatever shape he gives it, the iron is still black and cold.

Holmes asks no questions, but then, Holmes never needs to. After a week Watson offers him the notebook, which he reads slowly and hands back with a silent nod. Someday, perhaps, Holmes will speak about whatever secret battles he fought in those long years; Watson has heard from the villagers that Holmes only returned to Sussex in August, when the war was nearly over. There is a look in his eyes sometimes that Watson remembers from those cases that brought more tragedy than justice.

Watson writes the winter away. He begins to wonder if he'll ever be done with the war, or rather if the war will ever be done with him, but he can only wait and see.

The early flowers come bursting through the mud. In France, spring always seemed like a bitter joke, and Watson inevitably wonders what flowers are blooming over the trenches and all their hundred million scattered bones. But he's learning to let such thoughts come and then fade, and to look at flowers without thinking of blood.

Holmes still keeps irregular hours, and one morning just after dawn he rushes into the bedroom with a great clatter. "Quickly, Watson! Come and see!" Not allowed time to dress, Watson is dragged in his nightshirt to the beehives. 

"What am I meant to - "

"Look!"

A bee emerges slowly from the hive and takes flight. "They're alive," Holmes says. 

"Ah. Jolly good."

"They don't care for disturbances. I lost most of the hives while I was away. This is the last, and I feared they might not survive the winter. But it seems I am fortunate."

"Some things endure," Watson says, and Holmes smiles one of his rare, true smiles.

"My dear fellow, how right you are. What do you say to a walk before breakfast?"

"Capital. But perhaps I ought to dress first." As he turns back to the cottage, Watson hears Holmes laugh, a bright sound shining like the first green of spring.


End file.
